Announcement

The below is an e-mail to our customers, from Triggertrap founder Haje, on 31 January 2017

Hi,

I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible, not least because this is an e-mail I really never wanted to have to write.

Ever since our failed Kickstarter campaign, Triggertrap has been struggling. We’ve gone through several rounds of lay-offs to keep the company afloat, but ultimately, ended up being unable to save Triggertrap.

Today, we are announcing that the company is going to close down.

If you have any questions about the company closing down, please refer to our FAQ, below.

PRODUCT — We have a little bit of stock left in our warehouse. If you want to buy any of it at less than half price, please head to the Triggertrap shop TODAY. The shop will be closing in the next couple of weeks.

Triggertrap has been a part of what I’ve done for many years now. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished as a team, and the Flickr group continues to amaze me. You’ve created so many beautiful photos using Triggertrap products. Please keep doing that, even as the company itself fades into the night. Thank you for all your support.

What happens now?

We anticipate the business will be wound down by the end of February 2017.

UPDATE: Took us longer than expected, but the company was wound down in June, 2017

What will happen to the mobile apps?

We will keep the apps on the App Store, which means that your existing equipment will continue to work as it does today.

However, there is a risk that a future iOS or Android update breaks an app’s features’ functionality — that has happened before. If that should happen, we don’t currently have a plan in place for doing an update, which means that the products would stop working at that point.

Can you open source the apps?

Open sourcing the apps is an option we are looking into; it’s not a road without the odd obstacle, however. Primarily, we would need to find someone willing to maintain the codebase, and do the work to make it ready for open source release. This is a lot more work than you’d imagine, and we haven’t yet found someone who’s able to take on that task. We are trying, however. Stay tuned.

Can I still buy Triggertrap Mobile kits?

There are only a few hundred Mobile kits left in the world, and they are spread all over the place, with distributors, in warehouses, in Amazon, etc. There are plenty of cables available, but the true challenge is to find new Mobile dongles.

UPDATE: These are mostly sold out now — there are a few left on Amazon.

When will you have kits back in stock?

Is there other equipment out there that is compatible with Triggertrap?

We aren’t aware of other companies making camera connection kits that are compatible with Triggertrap at this time, unfortunately.

What if I run into a problem?

We no longer have capacity to run technical customer support, and will be directing you guys to our Reddit forum.

Triggertrap has a passionate, lively bunch of users, and we hope that you will help each other out as far as possible.

The existing product FAQs will also be moved, and we are hoping to keep our tutorials and manuals online for a while, so you can continue to get the most from your Triggertrap kit.

If you ordered something from us in the last few weeks and your product is in transit, we will continue to offer logistics support (I.e try to ensure your parcel is delivered.)

May I have a refund?

Unfortunately, we are unable to offer refunds at this time.

So, what happened?

Triggertrap, like any startup, had some big highs and lows. At one point, we employed 15 staff; a team of photographers, coders, support, marketing, logistics, and operations. Ever since we announced that our Triggertrap Ada Kickstarter project failed, we’ve been in a downward spiral. For the past 18 months, we’ve been operating with just a few team members, who have been working their asses off to keep the lights on. But ultimately, we weren’t able to claw our way out of the hole, and the company now owes the company’s founders around $60k. With no realistic hope of ever paying that money back, and after ten months in a row of struggling to make payroll for our remaining staff members, we decided it was time to give up.

Mat and Haje will try to write up a full retrospective of the company — what worked and what didn’t, and how did we end up eventually failing. That sort of thing. Stay tuned, we’re hoping to get that post written and published some time in spring this year.